Using psychology to help overcome problems in areas, such as mental health, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Incidence of psychiatric diagnoses in offspring prenatally exposed to SSRIs

A recent article in the Journal
of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry presents a study
looking at prenatal exposure to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
and associated increased rates of depression diagnoses in early adolescence.
The report stresses that these findings are preliminary and should not be
construed to change clinical practice.

The study is the first to
investigate the incidence of psychiatric diagnoses in offspring prenatally
exposed to SSRIs as far out as adolescence, noting however the vital importance
of treating maternal depression, which can have significant adverse effects on
offspring. Untreated maternal depression has been shown to increase risks of
several perinatal outcomes including preterm birth, delivery by C-section, and
bleeding during delivery.

Researchers used Finnish national
birth registry data to determine the cumulative incidence of depression,
anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorder, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder in the offspring of four groups of mother-offspring dyads: mothers exposed
to SSRIs during pregnancy, mothers exposed to psychiatric disorder but not to
antidepressants, mothers who used SSRIs only before pregnancy), and children of
mothers unexposed to either antidepressants or psychiatric disorders.

They found the cumulative
incidence of depression among offspring exposed prenatally to SSRIs was 8.2% by
age 14.9 years, compared with 1.9% in the psychiatric disorder/no medication
group and 2.8% in the SSRI-discontinued group. In contrast, SSRI prenatal
exposure was not associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder,
ADHD, or anxiety.